Kushiel's Mercy

the heroes of my heart. “ Our honor. Our privilege. And we are no less proud than she.”
    Leander bowed. “I will.”
    Twilight into dusk, dusk into night. The revels continued. The musicians played, tireless.
    We danced, trampling the greensward. I could not count my partners. I only knew, as the sky began to lighten in the east, that the last one was the one that mattered. I held Sidonie in my arms. The prophecy an old Priest of Elua had spoken for me so many years ago had proved true. I had found love and lost it, over and over again.
    This time I meant to keep it.
    Weary-looking servants began making the rounds, handing out gilded baskets filled with rose petals. One last ritual, one last gift for the merry-makers who had stayed to usher in the dawn. There were more of them than I would have guessed. The musicians laid down their instruments. Someone—Mavros, I thought—started a bawdy chant. A hundred more voices took it up.
    “Are you tired?” I asked Sidonie.
    She shook her head, eyes gleaming. “No.”
    “Good.” I scooped her into my arms and started toward the Palace. The crowd followed, cheering. “Neither am I.”
    “Imriel!” Sidonie laughed and wound her arms around my neck. “Surely you’re not planning to carry me all the way to our bedchamber?”
    “Mm-hmm.” I kissed her without pausing. “It’s not as far as the harbor in New Carthage, and you’re a good deal easier to handle when you’re awake and not wrapped in a carpet. I don’t ever want to lose you again, Princess. I might never let you go.” I kissed her again, hard and demanding. “Nothing and no one will ever come between us again.”
    She kissed me back. “Do you promise it?”
    The crowd swirled around us, pelting us with petals, laughing and shouting, offering traditional blessings and bawdy jests. Love. It was all done in love. I gazed at Sidonie, at the mixture of love and desire and perfect trust in her black eyes, rose petals caught in her hair. My unlikeliest of loves, found in the last place I would ever have thought to look.
    My sunlight.
    My heart swelled, my happiness feeling too vast for my body to contain. I felt the touch of divine grace brush us both like a mighty unseen wing, setting somewhat deep inside me to quivering, filling me with brightness.
    It felt like a promise.
    “Always,” I said. “Always and always.”